Part IV: The Sisyphus Artifact

I woke up on a bed with a crick in my neck that spoke to the poor quality of the mattress. Blinking the world back into life, I pulled myself semi-upright, resting on my elbows to get a look around.

‘Oh, you’re awake,’ Corminar said, from a seat in the corner of the room.

‘And you’re watching me sleep.’

The elf ranger shrugged. ‘One of us needed to make sure you recovered. Fully draining a power bar can be… a rather dangerous affair.’

‘Got us away from the elderbeest, though, didn’t it?’ I replied, and then reconsidered my question. ‘How comes it’s you watching me sleep?’

‘A poor roll of the dice,’ he replied. ‘But as you’re awake, now, we should go; the rest of the team are waiting downstairs.’

‘Drinking?’

‘Naturally.’

I nodded, began to move, and then looked down at myself, under the bedsheets. ‘Err…’

‘Yes?’ Corminar replied.

‘I’m naked. I kinda need you to leave before I can get out of bed.’

The elf raised an eyebrow. ‘Believe me, Styk, I’ve already seen everything.’

‘How! How could you have— Oh, you were the one who stripped me, weren’t you?’

‘I thought it better for your recovery that you sleep well.’

I pressed my lips together. ‘Very kind of you.’

Corminar held his hand out towards the the door as if to say “shall we?” and I sighed, heaved myself out of bed, and pulled my clothes back on.

‘Did you wash these?’ I asked.

‘Yes. In my lavender soak.’

I pushed my lips together approvingly. ‘Nice. Very nice.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Don’t tell Val I said that.’

‘I am going to.’

‘OK.’

Downstairs in the inn, we found the other four members of the Player Slayers. While I’d expected to find them smiling, sipping beers and perhaps trading stories of times past, I instead found them standing and shouting at each other.

‘No,’ Arzak was saying. ‘You all abandon me. I remember this. Start own business, tend to sheep, run off with man…’ the orc trailed off when she turned her attention to Val. ‘I still not know why you leave.’

‘Just stuff,’ the sorcerer replied.

I sat at the end of the table, and helped myself to a still untouched—at least, hopefully untouched—ale.

‘“Stuff?”’ Arzak repeated. ‘OK, not tell me. This is point: you all leave, you all do own thing, and now all decide to go back to way things were? No. This not OK with me.’

‘Why?’ Val asked. ‘Cos you think you’re so high and mighty? We need you, yes, but we need every person here. And everyone else? They’ve rejoined the team without too much convincing.’

Corminar put a finger in the air to raise a point of contention. ‘I was forced to by other circumstances. The Red Thorn—’

‘Red Thorn?’ Arzak repeated. ‘There is Red Thorn involved in this?’

‘Yeah, that’s actually news to me, too,’ Tokas said, and Lore nodded his agreement.

‘That’s not the point and you know it,’ Val responded. ‘Red Thorn? Yeah, we can deal with that later.’

‘What is point then?’

‘The point is that there’s a Player running around killing whoever the hells he likes, and we’re about the only team in the world who know it!’ Val didn’t stop for breath. ‘Anyone else out there? They see a Player killing people, they assume they’ve got problems with their eyes. Only us… only we know better. Without you, we stand less chance of killing him and surviving to tell the tale. But you better believe we’ll give it a go anyway.’

Tokas tilted her head from side to side as though she wasn’t sure about this particular point.

‘I know this,’ Arzak replied.

‘Then why won’t you join us?’

‘Because is too hard!’

‘Hard? Of course it’s hard, it’s killing Players! None of us signed up to this task in the knowledge it was going to be—’

‘No,’ Arzak interrupted, then sighed and sat down on the opposite side of the long bench to Val, making the table shake. Lore grabbed his beers—yes, two—to stop them from spilling. ‘Not this. Is hard… to lead.’

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Apparently this was new information to Val, because she didn’t immediately have something to say on the matter; it was hard to render that woman speechless, even for a moment. Without replying, she sat back down, it seemed the situation was calming down some, and the few other patrons of the inn turned their attentions back to their own conversations.

‘When I lead, I worry about all you. I make sure you don’t do dumb things.’

‘We don’t do—’ Corminar started, but a pointed cough from Lore made him trail off.

‘It is constant… headache. It is constant stress. I am too old for this, now.’ Arzak sighed, her shoulders slouching.

‘Don’t, then,’ Val said. ‘Nobody ever asked you to be in charge.’

As Arzak’s shoulders raised once more, taking Val’s words as having rude intention, Val quickly rushed to clarify.

‘I mean, you fell into that role cos you were good at it. But we’ve all grown since back then. Maybe we don’t need a leader any more. Maybe we can just… be a team.’

Arzak considered this for a moment. Well, more than a moment, really—a few minutes. In the meantime, I, Lore and Tokas sipped on our drinks, while Val and Corminar—typically the biggest drinkers among us—sat waiting for Arzak’s answer.

‘OK. I join, but I not lead. We have… equal footing. If screw up…’

‘...then it’s on us to fix it,’ Val finished.

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’

‘Good,’ Lore added.

As silence washed over this typically lively group, we sipped at a beers once more, and then Arzak—now truly engaging with the task ahead of us—asked a simple question. ‘What we have?’

‘Pyroknight,’ Val answered. ‘Level 42.’

‘Two accomplices,’ Corminar added. ‘An orc and a tiefling.’

Arzak nodded. ‘We dealt with frostknight already. This must be similar. What else?’

‘They were hunting something. Burned a whole town to the ground to get at it,’ Val said, then looked to me to follow up.

I pushed my hand into my pocket, about the artifact, but paused before revealing it, asking Val a silent question with my eyes. She nodded its answer, and I pulled the octahedron out for Arzak to see. Both the orc and Tokas leant forwards to get a closer look.

‘This is… Sisyphus Artifact?’ Arzak asked. ‘What it do?’

‘Brings you back to life,’ I said, staring at it. Then I tossed it casually in the air, catching it again. Tokas almost seemed to flinch. ‘Or, at least, it used to. I used the last charge.’

‘Ah, that how you escape Plainside?’

I nodded. ‘But not without losing every skill I’d ever earned. At least it gives me a pretty significant xp boon to help get me back on my feet again.’

‘Can I…’ Tokas started, reaching forward for the artifact, but Arzak’s domineering presence overwhelmed her question.

‘Do we know why they want this?’

‘Re-spec?’ Lore suggested.

‘Or maybe they knew about the xp boost but not about the “having to die first” bit?’ Val said.

Arzak nodded. ‘We should find out. Val, Styk, Lore—you three go find more about this artifact. Learn why Player might want it. Me, Tokas, Corminar—we go learn more about Player.’ She trailed off, and the table went silent. ‘I mean… if this what everyone else want to do? I not in charge.’

A moment later, Val broke into a smile. ‘It has my vote.’

Lore nodded. ‘Mine, too.’

‘How did you decide on these teams?’ Tokas asked.

Corminar stood from the table, apparently under the impression that we were going to set about this work right now. ‘I, too, agree with this course of action. We have not yet learned about his weaknesses—information that has served us well when dealing with previous wayward Players.’

‘Sit down, Cor,’ Val said. ‘We’re not going yet.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ Lore said. ‘I could do with some lunch first. And the stew here looked pretty good.’

‘I rather think we can do better than stew,’ Corminar protested.

‘Sit down, Corminar,’ Arzak said, and the ranger immediately did as suggested.

‘Six stews, is it?’ Lore said, beginning to stand but in this case for the bar rather than to leave.

‘You’ve been buying pretty much every meal between her and Carn, Lore,’ Val said.

Lore shrugged. ‘My wool is popular, it pays well.’

‘Still, let someone else get it.’ Val’s eyes drifted over the crowd and landed on the tiefling. ‘Tokas? What about you, this time?’

Tokas looked uneasily over at the barmaid, who was drying up a glass while intently returning the stare. Come to think of it, I realise, the barmaid might well have been staring at Tokas this whole time.

‘Oh, err…’ Tokas said. ‘I’ll give you the coin, but maybe… someone else could go and order it?’

‘Why?’ Lore asked, his tone curious rather than aggressive.

‘I just…’ Tokas gestured to her horns. ‘I don’t think—’

‘I get,’ Arzak said, standing upright and storming over to the barmaid without giving anyone a moment to argue it.

As the conversation around the table continued, I kept my gaze on the orc. She was leaning in close to the barmaid’s ear, whispering something that was taking far longer than placing an order for six stews. Whatever Arzak said, it had the barmaid suddenly hurry away, and she didn’t once look over at Tokas again.

We ate our stews—as delicious as Lore had suggested they would be—polished off another ale each, and then said our goodbyes. For the next week or so, it would be just Lore, Val, and me. At the time, I hoped that we wouldn’t run into any trouble without them—having an illusionist, a ranger and another huge warrior on our side could be the difference between life and death in some cases.

This hope, it would soon turn out, would be in vain.

"Styk"

Level 8 Novice Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 14

Intelligence — 59

Dexterity — 22

Strength — 35

Wisdom — 22

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 14

Knifework — Level 14

Identification — Level 7

Stealth — Level 5

Abilities:

Slice — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].

Stab — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR].

Closed Reach — Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches. Uses mana.

Local Portal II — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a ten yard radius. Uses mana/second.

Portal Slice — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects that are not reinforced by magic.

Stealth Attack — Passive. 50% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.

Basic Identification — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +400%